Leah woke up suddenly, even if there was no noise around her. Everything was so stationary and quiet that some kind of anxiety quivered all over her body. Then it went away as it had arrived, quickly. Her bedroom was just like she remembered it: special and messy. It was just a week she had gone to stay to her mother’s house, but she had already changed all she could to make herself comfortable: there was a big stereo near the window and a lot of book were scattered on the shelves. It was really different from where she had lived before but there was a reason. She wanted to forget what happened to her father just some days before: he had been found dead in a bloodshed in his house, in the near city of Muskegon. The police officer told her that it was a murder and that, even if she was of full age, it would have been better for her to stay with her mum until the culprit had been arrested. So there she was.
She got up and she went to the bathroom to wash her face. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she noticed her colour was paler than usual. At that moment, it didn’t bother her because she had had trouble sleeping and nightmares for nearly a week. She was weak and she knew. She went downstairs with the intent of taking some medicine and then go back to bed but when she entered the kitchen and she saw her mother crying with her head on the table, she changed her mind.
- Come on, mum. Everything will be fine, don’t worry –
Her mother seemed absent, so she just hugged her.
“In the end she was still in love with dad”
After 15 minutes, Leah started feeling bad and, even if she wanted to stay with her poor mum, she had to force herself to go out to calm down. She had always suffered from panic attacks, by then it was a habit to go for a walk every time she had them. She got out as quick as possible and she took a deep breath in the cold air of January. She went in the middle of her garden and she sat on the grass. Her head was pounding and she still couldn’t think of anything clearly, but the peacefulness was helping her. She raised her hand and she noticed it was covered in red fluid. She understood it was blood, thick coagulated blood. She felt breathless and her hearth missed a beat. She stood up trembling and she difficultly followed the tracks. She left her mother for just 10 minutes, how could anyone have harmed her?
She knew were the path was taking her: the little house into the woods she had built with her grandpa so many years before, when she was a kid. When she reached the little building, she was crying. She had imagined herself at her mother’s funeral and she couldn’t take it. She needed her to be alive! With this awful fear blocking her throat she opened the wooden door and she saw something so horrible that she remembered all the things that had happened.
The night before she had had a panic attack and she had gone in the same spot she was sitting some minutes before. Then someone had approached her from behind and she had just felt a severe pain slightly over the right hip. She had stood up and started running, but too much blood was coming out of the wound. She should have been somewhere near the house of her best childhood memories when she had stumbled and felt. The shadow had reached her. She had turned around and she had seen the psycho face of her mother. She hadn’t seen anything but her wrathful eyes and a butcher knife getting closer and closer to her.
A scream came out of Leah’s mouth, a scream of fear and shock. Her corpse was there, lying on the floor of the hovel. It was covered in insects and some parts had been removed, like her eyes and her ears. The chest was cut in two and her hearth was nowhere to be found. She tried to talk but she had no voice: she was dead and now that she knew she could leave that place forever.
Her mother was still in the kitchen, alone. She wasn’t crying anymore, she was laughing hysterically.
-Why are you crying? Everything went well! We killed our husband first, that stupid guy who couldn’t accept us for what we are. And then our little daughter: it’s been so fun, seeing that look in her face. We wanted to keep that memory, right?-
She opened one hand showing the two eyeballs stolen from Leah’s body.
- I don’t want to remember!- said a desperate voice – I loved her! I loved them! You destroyed everything!-
-You wanted us to do it! And now what are you going to do? I’m stronger than you!-
The mother continued talking to herself until a police siren rang out in the distance.